The Simplest Business To Start TODAY

You guys, he bought a business for $500 and from there scaled up to now a business that does $35 million in revenue. It's a pretty insane story, especially because he is a former MMA fighter, high school dropout at 15 and single father with no professional experience in business buying. That's the story we're talking about today. It's got pets, it's got profits, it's got how you can do it too. We're at his office. Let's go check this out. Oh, he's been waiting right here. Isn't this amazing?

Yes.

What's going on, man? How are you? You bought a business like way back in the day, originally your very first business for 500 bucks, right. And then scaled that all the way through a bunch of different things to 35 million. Can you talk to me about that very first purchase?

It was a very small content blog on a website called Flippa.com. it's a marketplace where you can buy and sell Internet businesses or websites. Yeah, it was a website about credit loans, very small, bought it for five and was able to flip it a couple months later for a profit.

And before that, you know, you were, you've been pretty public about this. You were a single dad, right? You were an MMA fighter. You were in construction. Like, what made you even think to go buy a business next?

At that time, I had an online travel agency with my co founder and I was doing all the marketing, so all the Internet marketing, SEO, lead generation. So I started learning about Internet marketing. That's why I said, okay, let me try and buy a website and then really think too much about it. Like, I just wanted to learn.

I love that. You know, we were talking the other day, Ramon is actually over at my house and we were talking with my husband about how buying websites, kind of like real estate in a way, you can start out with buying your first studio apartment and then take it all the way up to a one bedroom, then a two bedroom and then maybe a massive house next and a multifamily.

I did not, you know, start with a $35 million website. I started with something small, sold it for a little bit more, bought something else, and you know, it's a 10 year basically in the making. But I learned along the way and then scaled up and then I think the big jump was when I bought a website for $20,000, was actually a content site about wrestling, WWE, and then sold that in a year later a little bit less for 250k.

Wow. You bought a business that I Would never picture for you. Maybe you could tell people what that business was, how much you bought it for, and then you sold it for $9 million. Not bad. Let's talk about it.

Yeah, that's a soap opera blog. So content site about soap operas. Days of our lives, young and restless. Never seen a show, actually a full episode in my life.

Never watched a soap opera show. But you bought a company and then sold it for 9 million.

Actually that when I started. So I started, but the story was like this. I saw a soap opera website for sale, was for sale for $100,000, but I did not have money, so I just basically let me try it myself and then, you know, build from scratch.

That's wild. So you don't really believe then that you have to be passionate about the businesses that you're running, I'm guessing.

Yes. Most of my websites that I built are none of my passions. WWE was not my passion. Soap opera is not my passions. I love dogs, but I'm not, you.

Know, around, you know, a dog ramp aficionado. So we're in alphapa, your headquarters, and this company you've had for two and a half years now. Right. Okay. I want you to run us through some of these crazy products that you have at this firm. How many SKUs do you guys have?

Close to 50 now.

50 SKUs. And tell us, like, what do you sell? What, what happens here?

Our number one.

Well, actually, he shouldn't tell us, he should show us. Right? All right, so it's only natural that you started as an MMA fighter and now you sell these. So talk to me about this. These are like custom that you do for weirdos like me who want their dog or like you. That's your dog, right?

That's my pickle there. A very simple concept. You upload a picture of your dog or your pets. Sometimes we get requests for lizards or horses, pigs, artists then make a really cool, you know, art version of your pet and then you can either, you know, get it on canvas, T shirts, socks, anything you want. Actually, we're not printing it ourselves, so we're working together with a print company that is all over the world. They make our canvas, their blankets, our T shirts, socks, whatever, and then ships it directly to the customer. So it's a sort of a drop ship model because we don't have to hold inventory. We're not actually printing it ourselves. So it's only basically marketing.

And how big is this business now? Do you break it out in revenue from the overall company?

We sell like around 20,000amonth of these artworks and it's a seven figure business. Hopefully getting to eight figures in the next year.

Who would have thought? Puppers. Well, this is rad. How about man's best friend? Okay, so you have a lot of products here. Yes, At Alpha Paw. Tell me about what you guys sell. What does it mean to have a dog? E Commerce company.

So we started with the ramp. Right away I saw. Okay, ramp, it's a ceiling company or ceiling product. Sorry. Where you know, only a segment of dog owners need a ramp. And it's a one time purchase.

Right.

You want to see products that are recurring. Ideally, we started adding, quote, unquote, consumables, things that products that pet owners need every day, every week, every month.

Right.

So we have pee pets, for example. Then we have supplements.

So these are like allergies, calming. What are these?

These are actually. It's a brand of my son. His name is Victor. It's doggy treats. All natural, baked out of Vegas. Yeah, we actually have a baker making those.

What?

Yes.

MMA fighter turned baker and soap opera distributor. These are great. Babar, my dog loves those, as you guys can see. And this is just for like particular dog types. So this is for like dachshunds? Yes. What? That's crazy.

This is an all breeds foods because we have online communities around breeds. So what we. Instead of having an Instagram account or a Facebook page about all kinds of dogs or pets, we actually narrowed it down for breeds. So we have Instagram account, Facebook group, and a Facebook page about dachshunds. Just dachshunds. And then we have golden retrievers, we have Corgi Sitchus. We have all kinds of these online communities of specific breeds. You'll be surprised how passionate people are about their specific breed.

Okay, so let's talk finances. This company, you bought it, how much was it doing in revenue and what's happening now?

Yeah, I bought it in November 2018 for 325,000 to be exact. It was doing $700,000 in revenue the first 12 months. We were able to scale it from 700,000 to 7.5 million. Whoa. And then the second year we did 18 million.

That's wild. And what would you say, like the three things that led to that kind of growth?

Three things. Facebook ads, paid acquisition, email retention. So they didn't even had a mailchimp account or aweber, whatever. And moving a website from. They used Magento. It's a old school type of website. We moved to Shopify, made new pictures, changed the copy, and Those were actually the three things that we did.

Wow, that's wild. And then you added more product.

Then we added more products because we knew, like, oh, if you bought a ram from us, we ask you, what is your breed? What's the dog's name? So we had all this information, and then like, oh, you probably would also need pee pads or you need poop bags or stuff like that.

I love it. Super smart. So you saw this business online. Why did you choose that business?

Well, a, I like the space. I need to like the space, the category. I don't need to be passionate about it, but I need to like the category that there's growth, the market's cap, or the market. The audience is big enough.

What about what makes a good size? Like the pet industry, from what I hear, has great demographics. Like, these are some of them. And you can see how big the industry is growing. But from a newcomer, like, you weren't a dog expert in this space. So how are you? Like, okay, these numbers mean good.

The best advice I can always give is to ask, you know, other people that have done it or are doing it and for their, you know, for their health.

Yeah, that's smart. It's like stealing somebody else's 10,000 hours instead of you having to go out and learn the 10,000 hours. And they'll tell you pretty quickly, I don't like this part of the business. I like this part of the business, et cetera. Right?

Yeah.

So when you're doing your profit margins in the industry, like, what are industry profit margins? How does that work in E. Comm and pets in particular?

Yeah. So compared to content, the margins are not as great. I got a little spoiled in the content space. It depends really, on the channel, like Amazon, it's less.

And then everywhere else is based on whether you do ads or not. Yes. Okay. So I promised that I would get your financials, all the profits, all the details. And because, you know, you're Dutch and you like to keep things close to the vest. Let's go in the office. You can tell me all your secrets. Yes.

But as you know, I hate you for making me do all this video stuff. I don't really like it, but you can pay me back by on camera trying one of Victor's doggie cookies. It's all natural, so it is safe.

For humans, but I love it. So this is what I do for you guys. This is how much I care about you guys. Knowing about the business is. I'm eat this. This is Victor's. Oh, you Want to zoom up on my face? Thanks, Samuel.

Yeah, but it's a small bite more actually.

That's surprisingly. Yeah, it kind of tastes like an actual cookie.

Yeah.

Whoa. He's not even paying me for this. Really. You dropped out of high school at 15, right? What do you tell people as advice for when they want to go buy their first business? Like how do you. How do you get comfortable with that scary big thing? What would you tell somebody listening who only had that first 500 bucks or.

A thousand bucks stay in school? No, I'm just kidding. I would say like to not overthink it and start small and just start. You can read as much as you can books, go to college about it. But I think the best learning school is just by actually doing it. It's like swimming. You can read about how to learn to swim, but you're only going to actually learn about it jumping.

So today if they wanted to start, they could go to flippa. They could go to Quiet Light brokers. These are the lists for both of those. And they could pick a business based on kind of what we talked about before. Are they not marketing it? Does the business only have one skew? You know, is there like that ugly house on the nice block? Right.

What are the growth opportunities? Micro acquirers and other really great websites. Find small websites to buy. And also is it something like there's different Internet business, there's SaaS, software as a service. You have content, so blog or newsletter. And then there's E commerce and then they have a couple others. But Those are the three main ones also really important because a SaaS is just different type of business than a content site. Yeah, like I've made a mistake of buying all three of them at the same time, thinking I could run them all at the same time. And it was not a good decision because you need different type of people for a SaaS business than a content side or E commerce.

That makes sense. So I think the rule that I learned there is only date one woman at a time. Three women at the same time, more problems, more problems. More women, more problems. That's what we learned here.